An analysis of the war against public education by a teacher. A little humor now and then helps make the case.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Don't Miss This - Send Stager's Message to Obama...

Bravo to Gary Stager. Read the entirety of his blogpost here where he notes:

Here is a most stunning principle of the school the Obama children andBiden grandchildren will be attending:

(from Wikipedia) The school does not rank its students, as this conflictswith the Quaker Testimony of Equality.

What? Not ranking students??? No winners or losers? No AYP? Where is the accountability in that?

Perhaps there are other ways of identifying educational accomplishment? You wouldn't think so if you listened to President-elect Obama speakabout public education.

Like Stager, I voted for Obama (gladly) but with an ache in my heart all the same. He seems to see only dimly if at all how deceptively Orwellian the big-business driven standards and accountability movement is. He wants to "fix" rather than expose the No Child Left Behind Act for the outrage that it really is, a law replete with absurdities and hypocrisies, a law that rests entirely on a bed of false assumptions and false premises. A law under which thousands of public schools have falsely been labeled failing so that unproven "market solutions" can kick in, punitive solutions which have funneled billions to corporate interests. He is not connecting the dots between disaster capitalism and the relentless attacks on public education, attacks cunningly framed in the language of civil rights.

Forgive the rant but one more thing before I finish this post. It appears that Obama is a fan of charter schools. In my book, charter schools that are publicly funded but run by business interests are NOT public schools. They are yet another form of corporate socialism and control of the masses by the wealthy elite. How is it that we have a need for alternatives and "choice" where freedom and innovation are hailed and encouraged while our truly public schools have been held under the thumb of the most suffocating, oppressive, and punitive law imaginable, a law which guarantees their failure?One of the tactics of those who seek the destruction of public education is to call our public schools "government schools". Ah yes...and just WHO is controlling our government? Corporations! There is no more zealous supporter of NCLB and high-stakes testing than the Business Roundtable. Government is not the problem when we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And a well-informed citizenry as opposed to a citizenry misinformed by the corporate-owned and controlled media.